Imaginary Hell

This story is open to constructive criticism as well as any other kind comments. :) Please enjoy!

IMAGINARY HELL

Conrad Veers braced himself against the whirlwind as a silver and blue helicopter descended slowly through the evening air, its landing struts hovering mere feet above the helipad of the Kansas City Science Institute, or KCSI. Conrad couldn't help a cocky grin and a surge of pride as the chopper's struts lowered themselves toward the waiting pavement: as soon as that chopper landed, the KCSI would become the owner of the world's strangest new species, at least according to the explorer team returning from the remnants of the Amazon Rain Forest.

Around Conrad calmly strutted five other men and women in white lab coats like his, none of them showing the same giddy excitement that Conrad felt. They must just be hiding it, he figured as the chopper landed at last. This is the biggest discovery of 2020, if not the century! I bet they're jumping up and down inside like I am. Or is it just me because I'm the youngest here? A slight frown creased his forehead. Being 26 doesn't make me a child! And I'll prove it. I'll handle these new specimens like the mature adult I've become.

"Nervous, Conrad?" smirked Sally, catching the young man's attention. Her wire-frame glasses glinted with the helicopter's lights and her tight bun of black hair wasn't ruffled in the slightest by the chopper's winds.

"N-no! Not at all," Conrad babbled, realizing that he only gave himself away. He walked toward the chopper, shoving his hands into his coat's pockets. "Okay, maybe. I've been here for a year and a half but nothing this exciting has ever happened. It's a first for me."

"For all of us," Sally corrected him as the other two scientists helped the chopper's crew unload a large metal crate. "We've done some good work here at KCSI but this is different. The explorer team was bursting to get this back to us! They rushed here the minute they got the specimens out of that cave."

Conrad nodded mutely, remembering the message that KCSI had received: "Explorer team returning at once. Unusual specimens uncovered in previously unknown cave in Amazon Rain Forest remnants. High priority." That's all the message had said. "Well, let's see what Santa brought us, huh?" he offered brightly, rubbing his hands together.

Sally stifled a chuckle. "Christmas is close, but have a little patience," she chided him.

"Like you have any," Conrad shot back with another grin. "Always the first to dig into something new..."

Sally only smiled.

*o*o*o*o*

"And these are what's going to keep us up all night tonight," Richard Warner announced in his deep, stern voice as all six elite KCSI scientists gathered in Lab 1. The overhead lights glared over every surface of the room, banishing any drowsiness the crew might feel at nearly 1:00 AM. Richard habitually scratched at his bushy gray beard, fiddled nervously with his thick glasses, and grasped the handles on the airtight metal crate resting on a wide counter. Everyone held their breath as Richard slowly raised the lid, then sighed with exasperation as the contents literally came to light. Wisps of frost leaked from the frozen interior of the box, and sitting in ten rows of ten sat what appeared to be meatballs.

"They're, uh... very nice," offered Travis Park, a middle-aged black man, with a bracing smile. "Exactly a hundred, too."

"No specimens were left behind in that cave," Richard declared. "Exactly one hundred of them found... and taken."

"But what exactly are they?" insisted Sally. She approached the crate, her high heels clacking against the sterilized tile floor. Peeking at the frozen meatball-things, she pursed her lips in thought.

"All in good time, Sally," Richard told her, taking Sally's shoulders and gently pushing her back. "I am going to extract one now and scan it."

Sally looked excited again. "Which kind?"

"All kinds," Richard said as he sought a pair of tongs. "Sally, help me out. Everyone else, get the machines ready. CAT scans, MRI, X-ray..."

Conrad blinked. "X-ray? Don't tell me you think these meatballs have bones?"

Richard's icy glare sent shivers down Conrad's back. "X-ray equipment," he glowered. "Get it set up. And don't you question me. No stone will be left unturned! Everyone get moving!"

Conrad turned to Marie and Harry, the last two team members. "You guys wanna help me?"

The brunette Marie shrugged. "Fine."

*o*o*o*o*

"Hank! You're still here?"

Conrad froze in place, Harry and Marie halting too when they ran into the KCSI's gray-haired janitor. The old man gave Conrad a dull look from under his bushy gray eyebrows, clutching his mop tightly. A bucket of dirty water sat next to him.

"Yuh, still here," Hank mumbled crossly. "Why?"

"It's pretty late," Conrad offered gently. "Why don't you go home and relax tonight? You've done enough."

"Like you'd know, kid," Hank shot back, picking up his bucket and shuffling down the hall. "Let me work in peace."

Marie smiled ruefully as Harry swung open the door to the MRI scanner room. "Oh, Conrad. You still don't know how to treat poor old Hank."

"I was being nice to him!" Conrad objected as Harry flipped on the light and closed the door behind the three of them. "Is that so wrong?"

"He takes pride in his work. Or he's too stubborn to retire," Harry joked as he wandered into the control room for the advanced MRI scanner. He pressed a few buttons. "But don't sweat it. It ain't personal." He flipped a switch. "Now we wait for Richard to quit being stingy with the samples and give us some to scan. Wonder what we've gotten ourselves into?"

"A raise, I hope," Conrad joked. "After all, I – yow!"

For the fire alarm blared right into his ears, and both Harry and Marie flinched as the too-loud sirens wailed on the walls.

"What the devil..." Harry shouted over the din as he rushed back to the door. Both Conrad and Marie hurried after him toward the security room, quickly checking the video feeds for a fire. There, on Camera 26, was a blaze in the auxiliary storage room. On-screen, the sprinklers hissed to life and flooded the room, dousing the flaming boxes and crates within minutes.

That was random, Conrad figured, but he changed his mind when a lurching figure on the screen's background drifted closer to the camera. The unmistakable, pot-bellied Hank wandered past, looking agitated.

"That idiot started a fire? He really does need to go home," Harry grouched. He watched as Hank walked off-screen, leaving the storage room empty once again. A minute later, the janitor walked past the security room, smelling of smoke.

"Idiot!" Harry bolted to his feet. "Go home already! Set fires on your own time!"

"It wasn't my fault," Hank blanched. "Just got careless, that's all! Maybe you shouldn't keep such dangerous stuff in the facility! All them weird chemicals... you could make it hell in here."

"Just go home," Harry bit back, and the old janitor shuffled off, leaving behind the scent of smoke.

Conrad broke the silence first. "Well... that was weird, wasn't it?"

"Let's just get back to work," Harry said shortly.

*o*o*o*o*

"Get this in the log, Sally: 2:03 AM, December 22, 2020, first brain scan of new species taken," Richard told his assistant as he carefully placed one of the meatballs on a tray and picked up a handheld scanner. "Scanning now..."

A green beam of light swept over the semi-frozen meatball as Richard moved his scanner over it, and sally busily typed the proceedings into an electronic tablet. She flinched when Richard tossed the expensive scanner onto the counter top with a loud clatter. "Impossible!"

"What's impossible?" Sally asked with hesitation.

Richard pointed. "No results. There's no scan results at all! No brain waves anywhere!"

"Just do it again," Sally encouraged him.

Richard glared as he picked up the scanner. "Don't you boss me around. This first discovery is mine to handle!"

"Sheesh, touchy," Sally mumbled, but she said no more as Richard carefully moved the scanner over the meatball once again. And for the second time, Richard set down the scanner in defeat.

"Nothing at all. This thing is like a rock," the senior scientist gritted, his eyes flashing. "The scanner is top of the line. And now it fails me."

Curious, Sally bent over slightly to peek at the innocent-looking meatball. "Well, I'll be darned. Our new discovery is brain-dead! Maybe it really is dead and hasn't rotted yet?"

"You know better than that," Richard rumbled. "This scanner can pick up residual brain activity from lunch meat. Your average sandwich as brain activity that I can scan, and even an ant is like a fireworks show on this scanner." He drummed his fingers restlessly on the counter top, eyeing the meatball. "It's like this thing is taunting me! Why is this happening?"

Sally felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickling as the meatball still refused to give any answers. We're really dealing with something new here, she mused. She stood back up. "Maybe the other scans will give us something. I bet the MRI and CAT scan teams are ready for the meatballs."

"If they even really are meat or flesh," Richard snapped. "Get the samples moving."

Still feeling like eyes were watching her, Sally nevertheless picked up the meatball with the sterilized tongs and walked over to the waiting tray of the other 99 specimens, placing it carefully with its fellows. Then, she gently lifted the cool metal tray with both hands and ferried it across the room.

Darkness swallowed the room with a loud hum of dying machinery.

"Yikes!" Already feeling her nerves tensed up, Sally stumbled and her stomach lurched as she nearly lost her balance in alarm. Worse, she felt the tray pop out of her hands and with a deafening clatter, the tray hit the floor. Frantic, Sally knelt and felt around for the samples, finding a few of the icy meatballs with her gloved fingers.

"Now what?" Richard raged, and Sally could hear his heavy footsteps as he stomped toward the door's general direction. "Someone is going to pay for this!"

"Just calm down!" Sally retorted, all patience lost. She found a few more meatballs and scooped them up.

"Screw it. We're done for tonight," Richard sighed loudly. "We're coming back first thing in the morning to continue. Maybe everyone is wound up too tight."

Most of all you, Sally noted.

*o*o*o*o*

"Hank, if you don't stop ruining our lab, we'll have to fire you," Richard told the janitor with forced calm the next morning. "That power outage was your fault. I saw the security footage earlier this morning. Why would you tamper with the fuse box?"

"Trying to replace the damn thing. It's outdated," Hank defended himself. "Been meaning to fix it a while now."

"While we're working? And on an important sample, at that?"

"Guess I was more tired than I realized."

"You need to retire."

"No. I can't leave now." The old janitor's eyes were steely.

"Why not?"

"I... I just can't."

Richard whirled around and made his way down the hallway. "Fine. Then back to your duties. But I'm being generous. One more screw-up, and you're done working here."

"So be it," Hank glowered.

*o*o*o*o*

"Commencing MRI now, captain," Conrad joked as he pressed the initiation button on the MRI's scanner console. One hundred meatballs, all in a plastic tray, slid slowly into the machine's circular chamber.

"Don't joke around," Richard snapped as the MRI began its rhythmic scanning. "We're down two members today. Harry got food poisoning last night and Marie nearly broke her neck down a flight of stairs at her home early this morning. This is no time to play around."

Conrad cringed. Wow, that's some bad luck for Harry and Marie! "Sorry. It's just that everyone seems so upset, so I was..."

Richard folded his arms and knitted his eyebrows together. "Just do your job, all right?"

Swallowing hard, Conrad kept his eyes on the screen as Travis and Sally watched. "Yeah, okay. Scans nearly done. And... totally done."

"Are these... eggs?" Travis breathed, his eyes bugging out.

Sally squinted. "Must be. Those seem to be embryos."

"Let me see!" Richard demanded, shoving his way through the others. He brought his nose to within an inch of the screen, eyes taking in the black and white images. "Yes... they could be eggs. But there's so many layers of flesh between the outside and the embryo."

"Layers of protection?" Sally offered. "Or specialized cells waiting to be used?"

"But these things have no shells," Travis pointed out. "Shell-less eggs are always in water like fish or amphibian eggs, but these eggs do just fine in the air. They should have shells like any other land creature egg."

Conrad got to his feet, peeking at the hundred meat eggs through the window separating him and the room's MRI scanner. "Yeah, they're really just like meatballs. How do they protect themselves?"

"Secrecy, maybe," Sally put in. "They were in a deep cave. We're the ones who dragged them out into the open."

"For science!" Richard added firmly. "For the discovery. We'll take every precaution to make sure these eggs or whatever they are don't suffer under our care."

"How long are we going to keep them, anyway?" Travis asked.

"Need you even ask?" Richard snapped. "These are ours now. They belong to KCSI."

Travis licked his lips, his eyes not leaving the screen. "For all we know, these are the last hundred of their kind. What if they won't hatch in our lab? Perhaps we should return them... this doesn't feel right."

Richard inflated his chest to shout his retort, but Sally spoke first. "It's okay, Travis. Those cave networks are huge. There's bound to be many more meat eggs in there. And we do have access to the most advanced equipment in the United States. What could possibly be a better nursery for the eggs than our lab?"

"If they really are eggs," Conrad blurted. Everyone looked at him.

"They have embryos, Conrad," Richard reminded him impatiently.

"They have what look like embryos," Sally interjected, folding her arms. "Maybe we should cut one open and find out."

"No!" the expression on Richard's face bordered on demonic. "We can't desecrate them like that! Too valuable. First come more tests. The eggs might be on the verge of hatching, and I don't want to lose any of them."

This project is eating the boss alive, Conrad lamented. Did something happen to him?

*o*o*o*o*

"Martha, you can't be serious!" Richard cried when his teary-eyed wife gave him the news. The clock in the living room was nearing midnight.

"Yes, I am serious, Richard," Martha told her husband, her voice shaking. "I can't take this any longer! That laboratory... it's changing you."

"No, we are changing the world! One discovery at a time!" Richard pleaded. The glowing Christmas tree in the living room did little to ease the tension. "My work is at a critical stage, and I -"

"And you forgot what you're leaving behind," Martha interrupted. "Why can't you be a decent father figure for Sammy and Maggie? You kids need you, and you're never there. I call you when you stay late at the KCSI, and you ignore me. I ask you what's wrong when you come back home looking stressed, and you tell me it's nothing! I've put up with this for weeks. All you ever give is a paycheck."

"Once this is all over, I can set everything right," Richard insisted, his insides going numb. I should have seen this coming. "I love you, Martha, and I just want you to be happy. I'm not the villain here."

Martha bit her lip, then firmed her gaze. "Then stay at your precious lab and finish whatever the hell you're doing there! Don't come back here until you've realized what you're doing to your family. I gave you all the chances in the world, and you wasted them."

"You're being irrational!" Richard sputtered. "The explorer team brought back a hundred specimens of a new species from the Amazon last week! I am the team leader. I have to see this through!"

"Then do it. Spend time with your other family," Martha glowered.

Richard hesitated for a minute, then snarled silently and stomped out the front door. "You don't know what this means to me!" he called over his shoulder as he swung open his car's door.

"I don't even want to know," Martha shot back, then slammed the house's front door shut.

*o*o*o*o*

"Is it just me, or are these damn things cursed?" Conrad muttered as he and Sally sat, once again, in the MRI's control chamber. The massive machine rhythmically took one picture after another of the tray of meat eggs, and images began to appear on the screen.

Sally rubbed her eyes. "Cursed?"

Conrad leaned against the console in fatigue, resting his chin on one hand. "I mean, ever since we got these things, stuff has been happening. The janitor's been blowing everything up, and then on the first night we got these Amazon specimens, Harry and Marie went down from a neck injury and food poisoning. What are the odds? It can't be natural."

"You're over-thinking it," Sally tried to comfort him. "Everyone's a little jumpy, I suppose, but there's nothing to be afraid of."

"Oh, yeah?" Conrad said darkly. "Harry got back to work yesterday, but he isn't himself, is he?"

"Well... no," Sally admitted with a wince. Yesterday Harry had recovered from his food poisoning, which turned out to be a bad case of Salmonella. But while he worked in his station one floor below Conrad and Sally, he had been seen muttering frantically to himself, something about "They're watching me. They're watching us. They're furious!" He would refuse to keep a sane conversation with anyone, so he was left alone.

Sighing heavily, Conrad gave the screen another look. The meat eggs looked no different than before. "Think he's overworking himself, or just crazy?"

"Those aren't very nice options," Sally complained.

"Well, I hesitated to say that 'the eggs are affecting him'," Conrad said slowly. "I bet that Richard would throw me out if I suggested that they're doing some hypnosis attack on him or something."

Sally couldn't help a quick smile. "Been staying up late with cheap horror flicks? What a bachelor you're being."

"Hey, that hurts," Conrad smirked back. His face fell. "But still, I can't help but get a really bad feeling here. Science probes the unknown, and the unknown sometimes bites back."

"Now Richard would really throw you out for that one!" Sally laughed, smoothing her dark gray skirt under her parted lab coat. "Relax, Conrad. There's bound to be a good reason for all this. Either we're imagining it, or the meat eggs are truly something unnatural. But I'm betting on the former."

"What do you think they really are?" Conrad asked, tearing his eyes from the screen. It was like the egg images from the MRI were taunting him.

Leaning back in her seat, Sally glanced up at the ceiling. "Oh, I dunno. Salamanders? Lizards? Large worms? Fish? Could be anything that lived in those caves. You'd be surprised how diverse cave ecosystems can be."

"Let the quest for the truth begin," Conrad commented.

"Well, I can't help it." Sally shrugged. "I dedicate my life to finding answers and disposing of crazy claims and hoaxes. There's only one truth in everything. Been that way since I was little."

"What? Did something happen?"

"A so-called UFO sighting in my hometown," Sally said with suppressed derision to the idea of UFO's. "Strange lights, things disappearing. My uncle was convinced that he had been abducted at night while driving back home. Thought he'd make the news and be the next Betty and Barney Hill by himself! I was eight years old and didn't believe a word of it. No proof at all of alien visitors."

Conrad felt his skin prickling. He resisted the urge to scratch his hands as he asked, "How did all that turn out?"

"Combination of a low-flying airplane and a local thug stealing," Sally laughed. "A lot of people were upset when the whole thing came crashing down. But one assumption of danger caused all that commotion! I was amazed at that and vowed to always look for the hard truth in everything. I consider myself a filter for the crazy nonsense versus the crazy reality."

"I'd better get a water bucket."

"Huh?"

"I can see a fire in your eyes!" Conrad returned the laugh as the MRI finished. "Well next time I see weird lights, I'll just call for you."

Sally picked at one of her fingernails to distract herself. "You do that."

"Anyway... break time," Conrad declared, standing up and stretching. "I'll be in the rec room."

"And I'll come along. Might as well catch the news of the outside world," Sally joked as the two of them made their way to the break lobby. The television was already on, a news report of a car crash downtown.

"...the victim was 34-year-old Travis Park, a staff member of KCSI," stated the female reporter. "Slick driving conditions caused 68-year-old Hank Kendall to lose control of his vehicle and crash head-long into Park's car, resulting in the death of Kendall and serious injury for Park. Park is now in emergency medical care and it may be weeks before he returns to the lab where he works."

Conrad stared. "Not Travis, too!"

Sally rounded on him. "You make it sound like a serial killer is after us. Come on."

"But... "Conrad sputtered. "Look! Harry's almost never been sick, but then he gets Salmonella that puts him down for days. Marie nearly broke her neck, and now Travis nearly died. And the janitor was driving the other car!"

"The roads are icy. This could happen to anyone," Sally scoffed.

"But he's on our team! The team with the meat eggs!" Conrad persisted, his insides feeling leaden. "And so were Harry and Marie. Don't tell me that isn't weird!"

"It is weird," Sally admitted, "but didn't you listen to me earlier? There's nothing paranormal or divine going on here. We just got a new batch of specimens from the Amazon and the stress is making everyone careless and paranoid. I didn't think you were naïve, Conrad."

Conrad's already-tense insides clenched. "Don't be rude, Sally. Is it so bad for me to try to rationalize this?"

"That's a basic human instinct. It's not wrong of you," Sally tried to placate Conrad. "That's why there's people like us to find the real answers."

"I just can't shake the feeling like I'm next," Conrad shivered. "Like somebody is watching us. That's what Harry was saying."

"That's the stress talking. He must have the same rationalization as you, that there's some entity going after us." Sally smiled bracingly. "Harry's a bit of a weird one anyway. Just ignore him."

"Fine, fine. So, what next?"

Sally steeled her eyes. "What Richard didn't want us to do."

*o*o*o*o*

"I told you already, Sally! We are not going to cut them open!" Richard's eyes flashed when Sally proposed her plan to him the next night. Conrad stood by Sally's side, trying not to look defiant.

"Just one, Richard," Sally insisted. "If you give me permission, we could dissect one of them and learn a lot more about it than we could with MRI's and the brain wave scanner. We've made no progress since the first or second day. We need this."

"I'm not going to damage them!" Richard thundered. "Not one! These are what will make KCSI's name world-renowned!"

"And examining one in detail would make that happen!" Sally rebuked him. "I thought you'd want to open one of them and find out more. Unless you want to distribute the specimens to other facilities and let them mess around with them?"

"At some point, perhaps," Richard said slowly. "But how dare you try to take charge! This is my operation, not yours or Conrad's. These things are previous. They could be the only hundred we ever get."

"I don't know if we should share them anyway," Conrad blurted. "They're nothing but trouble. Other labs could suffer too if we gave them the eggs." Wait, did I say that aloud?

Richard looked taken aback. "I beg your pardon?"

"With respect, Richard, our team is getting mauled by these creatures," Conrad said, realizing that he was already committed. "Harry, Marie and now Travis all had accidents ever since the specimens came in, and the janitor was going nuts until he died. Plus Harry keeps saying things about 'them' watching us and being angry."

With a snort, Richard waved a hand. "Sally warned me of your paranoia about all this. It's all in your head! You're making up this imaginary hell, and I want it to stop. All of us here are professionals and will carry out our duty! These eggs are precious and will be guarded closely."

"You sound possessive," Sally noted.

"I should be!" Richard told her quickly. "As team leader I take full responsibility for these things. We won't desecrate any of them unless we absolutely have to. They might even be toxic on the inside, or dangerous in some other way."

Sally squinted. "We have equipment to deal with that. Let me just have one!"

"You won't! End of discussion!" Richard barked, and Conrad flinched when Richard swept his open palm out and turned Sally's head with a slap to the cheek.

"Bastard," Sally hissed, clapping a hand to her cheek. "You won't get away with this."

"The hell he won't!" Conrad shouted, lunging after his boss. Richard raised his hands to fight back, but the quicker young man forced Richard down. With a crack, Richard's head smashed against the corner of a table and he slumped to the floor, blood leaking from his head.

Sally knelt by her fallen boss, fingers scrambling over the man's head. "How could you be so violent?" she sputtered. "and don't just stare – get me a first-aid kit!"

"I was only trying to help," Conrad mumbled, but he found himself hurrying to the nearest first-aid kit on the wall. His head felt hot and itchy as he handed over the kit, gawking at his unconscious boss. His heart still hammered. What the devil came over him? And me? Richard's acting like opening an egg will be the end of the world! Why is he so protective of them? Unless... they've possessed him somehow, like they possessed Hank!

"Come on. Let's get some real work done," Sally said shakily as she placed the bandaged Richard on a table. Conrad nodded mutely and followed her to the dissection lab, feeling crappier by the minute.

*o*o*o*o*

It occurred to Conrad that he, Sally, and Richard were the only ones working at KCSI this late, but that didn't seem to bother Sally as she set one of the meat eggs on a shiny silver tray and adjusted an overhead light. Slipping on thin rubber gloves, she picked up a large scalpel and lowered it slowly to the meat egg as Conrad watched. "Wish me luck," she commented, then pressed the scalpel's sharp edge to the egg creature's hide. Sally made an impatient noise as the egg's surface refused to yield, so she gently sawed back and forth and pressed a little harder. With a squelching noise, the egg's fleshy surface began to split and open under the scalpel's pressure.

"Almost... there," Sally muttered as she cut deeper into the meat egg's layers, and then the scalpel's blade clinked against the tray's surface and the egg fell into two nearly-identical halves.

"Whew," Conrad pinched his nose and fanned his other hand. "Sulfur-based life forms, huh?"

Sally blinked back tears as the powerful scent of sulfur drifted from the meat egg's exposed interior. "Maybe this species thrives in sulfur-based environments, like a spring. Who knows what's in that cave?"

"So, is the embryo there?" Conrad asked, tentatively approaching the exposed specimen. Sally didn't need to answer; there, nestled in one half of the egg, was a twisted gray-green creature with a soft, jelly-like body and four limbs early in development. There was no visible eyes or head, at least not that Conrad saw.

"As I figured earlier, might be a salamander species," Sally mused, gently running her gloved finger over the embryo. "This little thing... this is what Richard was defending so much. I don't see what the big deal is."

Conrad shuddered as he recalled his violence against his boss. Oh man, I'm so fired when Richard wakes up, he realized. What was he thinking, hitting Sally to defend just one egg? And what was I doing attacking him? His gut squirmed as he looked at the soft embryo creature and he found himself clenching his fists. These damn things are ruining everything! If they're not possessing us or something, it's one hell of a placebo. No, that can't be it. Food poisoning and a traffic wreck aren't a placebo. Something is going on here!

"Deep in thought?" Sally said gently. "You seem upset. Well, I don't blame you..."

Shaking his head to clear it, Conrad tried to keep his face straight. "I-I'm fine. Look, why don't we scan this thing now that we've exposed it? No harm in that."

Sally nodded as Conrad fetched the brain wave scanner, clicking its on button and sweeping the detection beam over the embryo. Conrad's breath caught in his throat when the results showed 0.

"Still nothing!" Conrad complained, holding the scanner by his side. "I nailed that thing good and it has no brain waves at all! Even embryo chickens are like a city of mental activity, but this little guy has zilch. Even if it were dead..."

"Well," Sally said shakily, "maybe this species really is more alien than we thought. It must use some different form of intelligence, a chemical-based nervous system totally different from ours. For all we know, this species, or even its whole genus, evolved differently in the caves than anything else."

"Figure it can affect other minds?"

Sally heaved a deep sigh, setting her scalpel down. "Conrad, stop it. Harry's muttering was just him being paranoid, and everything that's happened to the team is normal, but unfortunate, events. I'm sorry that Travis is in the hospital and that Marie nearly broke her neck, but it happens."

"Sometimes stuff can't be explained away so easily!" Conrad bit back, feeling the fatigue numbing his brain a little. "Even now, I feel like I'm being watched. My skin won't stop tingling and I can feel eyes watching me. These Amazon eggs aren't normal! I want them gone."

Sally slapped a hand against the table. "If you can't handle a little mystery, then maybe you should -"

The sudden blare of the fire alarm drowned out the rest of Sally's sentence, but somehow Conrad didn't feel as surprised by the alarm as he usually would. Still, his muscles tensed as the ear-splitting wailing echoed down the hallway.

"Not again!" Sally shouted over the din. "What did Hank -"

"He's dead, remember?" Conrad shouted back. "We can't blame the old man for this one!"

"And we're the only ones here besides Richard!" Sally added, her eyes wide with fear. "He couldn't have..."

Conrad was already moving, shoving his way out the room's door and back to the room where Richard lay, and at once his boss bolted upright. "You!" Richard thundered. "You're fired. And what is going on?"

Well, that takes care of that, Conrad thought dryly. His mouth felt just as dry. "There's a fire. I don't know where. Maybe the sprinklers will take care of it."

"And where are the specimens?" Richard demanded. "Did you or Sally move them?"

"No," Conrad explained quickly. "They're still in their tray in Lab Storage 1, two floors down."

At once, Richard swung his legs over the edge of the table and dashed down the hall. "Then we'll get them before the fire does! Help me get them to safety!"

"But you fired me."

Richard halted, whirling around on the spot. "Then you're unfired, and then re-fired when this blaze is contained and the specimens are safe! Now come! And Sally, too! Where the devil is she?"

Feels like the devil is indeed playing a part in this! Conrad thought as the faint scent of smoke drifted into his nostrils. All the same, he fetched Sally from her lab room, breathlessly urging her to help him and Richard retrieve the Amazon samples. Down one flight of steps they went, where the fire alarms still wailed and the scent of smoke got stronger. Conrad felt heat in the air and when he and the others scrambled to the staircase to the next level, a thick wall of dancing, yellow-orange flames choked the staircase. The smoke drove everyone back, Conrad coughing into his sleeve.

"Just what caught fire down there?" Richard coughed. "Flammable fumes?"

"There must have been a leak. Or faulty wiring," Sally added. "I don't even know! This place is supposed to be safe! I don't think the sprinklers can handle all this!"

"Then we'll find another way down! We need the specimens!" Richard shouted over the alarms as he tore down the hallway toward an emergency fire exit. Conrad and Sally followed him down the concrete steps at top speed, and the air's warmth increased as Conrad reached the lower floor. Smoke wafted in air currents through the half-darkened hallway and flames crackled at the hall's far end, so Richard took the other way and made his way down another hallway, halting only when a pair of sealed glass doors barred the way.

Not even hesitating, Richard seized a nearby wooden chair and swung it hard against the glass doors, shattering them into thousands of jagged pieces that rained onto the tiled floor. Leaping through the crooked hole, Richard led the way farther into the warm, smoky complex and took another turn toward Lab Storage 1, but another wall of fire blocked the way and Conrad couldn't even get close without his skin blistering from the hot air.

"No! No!" Richard stomped his foot. "We have to get in there! All the samples are there!"

"All but one!" Sally told him.

Richard rounded on her. "What?"

"I... took a sample and took it to the lab where I was working." Sally looked down. "I'm sorry. But there is one left, if you want it."

"You disobeyed me!" Richard snarled. "But fine. We can go get that one, at least!"

Conrad felt very much felt like a trapped mouse as he and the others went back through the smoke-clogged hallways of this floor, and felt even more so when the staircase leading back up was blocked by flames. The fire's spreading too fast! We might not even make it out at all!

"This way!" Sally shouted, taking the lead down a different hall. The air grew slightly cooler as Conrad and Richard followed.

"But there's no staircase back up in this direction!" Richard objected as he ran. "We have to reach that last sample!"

"No good," Sally retorted. "Hard to say it, Richard, but we're on our own now. All we can do is escape."

Richard looked like he might say something, but he kept his silence as Sally led him and Conrad down another flight of stairs that led to the ground level. Just as she and the others started down another hall, the ceiling overhead began to creak and groan from the fire damage, and a flaming chunk of the ceiling came crashing down, spilling burning wood everywhere behind the party of scientists. A few seconds later, more chunks started to fall and the lights flickered.

"Hurry!" Sally cried as the ceiling shifted and cracked even more. Conrad felt his heart hammer in his chest as he prayed to every god he could think of, and his shirt and coat became soaked from both the heat and from fear. Up ahead emerged an emergency exit, and Sally slammed both her hands onto its handlebar and shoved the door wide open, letting cold night air wash into the hallway. Feeling like his legs would give out any second, Conrad dashed out into the open and slowed to a slow gait, his lungs burning from the shock of hot to cold air. Overhead, fire burst from the windows of the higher levels and Conrad could hear the sirens of incoming fire trucks. Clouds hid the moon and stars from sight, but the fire provided more than enough orange and yellow light.

We made it, Conrad thought to himself in victory. How do you like that, Amazon devil?

Richard, meanwhile, slumped to the grassy lawn and sat cross-legged, holding his head in his hands. "We lost them. We lost them all."

Sally knelt by her boss' side. "I know, but when the lab is repaired, there'll always be other work. It's a big world out there. We'll find a new species to play with soon enough."

"Right. I suppose so," Richard mumbled. "Oh, my head is killing me. And Conrad?"

Conrad stiffened. "Yes?"

"You're fired again."

*o*o*o*o*

"This is your apartment? I was right when I called you a bachelor," Sally commented brightly the day after after the KCSI fire as she stepped into Conrad's living room. She took off her coat and hat and settled onto Conrad's couch, shoving aside a few take-out boxes, a TV remote, and a few video game cases.

Conrad shrugged. "I'm fresh out of medical school, so this is my idea of kicking back. Thanks for coming by here with Christmas so close. I had thought at first that you'd go out of town to visit family."

"I can squeeze in a visit here too," Sally smiled. "I figured that after the way I treated you at the lab during the past week or so, we could try and be friends after all."

"And I thought I was blunt," Conrad smiled back, picking up the TV remote and pressing the on button. A sports game erupted on the screen but he flicked through the channel. "Why not a little bonding time with the news?"

Sally laughed as the news came on, and her face fell slightly when the KCSI facility appeared on the screen. "A mysterious fire broke out at the KCSI facility last night, but the blaze claimed no victims since scientists Richard Warner, Conrad Veers, and Sally Thompson all survived the fire with minimal injury, not even needing a hospital visit. Although still standing, the KCSI facility suffered extensive damage from the fire, over tens of millions of dollars' worth, most notably a collection of creatures recently obtained from a cave in the Amazon Rain Forest reserve. The search team found only charred remains of what had been documented as small, spheroid animals that have yet to receive a proper name or categorization. Head scientist Richard Warner is devastated by the losses but vows to have KCSI restored to full function, with or without the Amazon creatures."

"Well, at least Richard still has his spirit," Conrad remarked as he settled next to Sally, changing the channel again. "Even if he doesn't have his Amazon meat eggs. Or me."

"Oh yeah, you lost your job," Sally pouted. "It's too bad. Having you around was fun."

"That has to count for something," Conrad smiled. "And I wonder what those eggs really were?"

Sally slumped her shoulders. "Oh, come on. Haven't we all dealt with those horrible things enough?"

"Yeah, but the mystery is killing me," Conrad admitted. "And, uh... sorry if I pestered you with conspiracy theories about psychic Amazon meatballs."

Sally burst out laughing. "Apology accepted. I admit, I too want to know what really happened. Looking back, it's almost like a dream."

"Nightmare, more like," Conrad added.

"Too true." Sally nudged the coffee table with her foot. "I guess we'll all have to put it behind us for good and get on with our lives. So, what are you going to do instead, now that the boss fired you? Twice, if I recall..."

"Oh, I dunno." Conrad browsed through the TV channels. "Maybe become a regular old doctor or something. Just as long as I can work with patients who have regular brain waves and can hold a decent conversation."

Sally laughed again. "That zero-result scan really bothered everyone."

"So did that whole case. Glad it's all over."

"Mmmmmm. Yeah."

The End.